By Katie Palmer
Phi Theta Kappa is an honor society that has been around for over 100 years, helping millions of college students reach their full potential. PTK Whidbey has sponsored many talks, movie nights, and various other entertainment activities.
Jeff Stady, one of the advisors for PTK Whidbey, spoke about the organization has sponsored, arranged, and a little of what’s to come for the future. This year, PTK sponsored a talk in the Equity and Social Justice series that was arranged by Yadira Rosales for early Spring Quarter. Stady spoke about this, saying, “The speakers were Tim Wise and Nolan Cabrera. They’re both really nationally known speakers, you’ll catch them on TV every once in a while, and their main thing, as the series suggests, is that they speak toward equity and social justice, so they do a lot of talks about — what’s been very relevant these past couple years — white supremacy the problems with that, privilege, and how that all plays a role.” This talk was a webinar that students had access to via Zoom just a few months ago. While on-campus talks are ideal, the medium of Zoom is promising and fortunate for future, as it allows much easier accessibility for students than when just on-campus.
Talking more on what PTK has sponsored for the campus, Stady said “We’ve hosted movie nights, or we’ve had guest speakers, we’ve helped sponsor comedians and stuff like that. We’ve also had things like trivia nights we’ve hosted, and those are a little bit easier to manage than other things, because you’re really paying anyone to come to campus per se.” Stady elaborated on sponsoring comedians, saying “We’ve done things where we’ve partnered with the program board to have a comedy night, and they brought a comedian to the Oaks Club just as a performance venue since there isn’t a whole lot of space at the Whidbey Campus. So we helped with the setup, and at this particular event we did the food service, so we had a nacho bar set up and other types of snacks people could get during the performance.”
Not only has PTK done entertainment, but they’ve also set up food drives and clothing drives, as well as with the Whidbey’s Hope for Christmas organization. Stady spoke a bit about this. “Whidbey’s Hope for Christmas will have an organization in town, and they have a list of families in need, and we will ‘adopt’, so to speak 30-35 of those kids and we’ll put tags up on a Christmas tree, and people can get those tags and they’d get gifts for those children, so we’re kind of the go between for that.”
While of course this event didn’t happen during the pandemic, it’s likely looking to happen next year, and PTK will likely help with it again. Stady expanded on how the process of organizing and sponsoring events on-campus, or helping other organizations has been impacted by COVID-19. “Yeah, activity wise we haven’t been able to do many things, like participating with different things like orientation days when students are new to the campus, or every spring we’d have a cardinal day, where there’d be a barbecue and different events going on towards the end of the spring quarter. So in those aspects we’ve been kind of negatively impacted,” he said.
PTK has also been highly affected by the pandemic as a whole, but it wasn’t all negative. While the organization has been unable to have physical meetings, the Zoom meetings for the members have been promising. Stady spoke about how participation and attendance has gone way up as it’s much more accessible over Zoom than it is to go to campus. He said that it’s unfortunate to not be able to do any physical events or meetings, but the attendance and accessibility of Zoom has been a silver lining to the pandemic.
Stady explained that while there isn’t anything currently planned for PTK as Skagit Valley College returns to campus, they’re hoping to be able to organize some events for the winter and spring.
Phi Theta Kappa Whidbey has sponsored many events for the SVC Whidbey Campus and they’re an important asset to the campus as a whole. While things have been incredibly dry during the pandemic due to restrictions and the importance of safety, SVC and PTK look hopefully to the future. It should be a great year to be on-campus these coming quarters.
